Thursday it's Hot...No, Wednesday, it's Cool.

Dear Bloggery, it's been five months since my last confession. [This was written on May 1, 2014...today it is May 21, 2014].

Ah, blogs... how you taunt your keepers. You are the crying baby that we neglect. You are the nagging wife that we make promises to. You are the friend that we have allowed, so graciously, to sleep on our couch only to still be there when we tire of you...

Let's see, last entry was on December 17; that means that I need to update you (you nebulous "you," you!) with my new branch of entertainment journalism. I have been writing and taking photos for the local entertainment journal OC Weekly. Here is a link to some of the articles and reviews I've written. Many of them are still heavily connected with other aspects of the entertainment industry; for examples, I wrote a feature article on the highly theatrical band Skinny Puppy, I wrote a review of the musical performance of Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges's show with his band, The Abiders, and I wrote a review of a Goblin concert (they, of course, scored many of the horror films of Italian horror director Dario Argento). I've also had an opportunity to take some photos for OC Weekly, and in addition to conducting an interview with Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction, and writing an article and a review about them, I took photos of their exclusive Las Vegas show, wherein they performed their entire first studio album, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary.

In addition to the OC Weekly work, I've recently had several articles come out in various horror magazines. I have a cover story in the latest issue of Screem magazine; the article is an interview I conducted with Gareth Edwards, director of the new Godzilla movie. I also recently had another article published in Fangoria; this one was an interview with the director of the film Jinn.

Naturally, with all of these gigs, work on Horror Works, my site dedicated to the horror community of Los Angeles, has slowed; however, I still chip away at it. There are probably a dozen or so new reviews and articles waiting for your thirsty eyes at the site. As usual, most of my overflow photos from various events wind up on the Horror Works Facebook page. And, not to brag...but, there are many amazing photos waiting for you in the photo albums there. The most recent addition is an extensive album of shots from the recent horror convention, Monsterpalooza, which was held in Burbank as usual.

As far as film work goes, as usual, I currently have numerous projects in various stages of development. That, dear diary...err...I mean "dear bloggery" is the news for the day (and if my latest tendency to keep up with the blog is any indication, this will be the news for the next half year). Take care, all! See you next time 'round!

A B C D E F Tuesday

And here we...STOP! I was about to get the pre-production going for my third feature film, but for reasons beyond my control [money], the mission has been temporarily suspended. It was a bit of a heartbreak because I do so love putting a production together. Alas, sometimes reality checks artists. Oh well, what can you do? Keep on keepin' on, I suppose. There's still plenty to occupy me. I'm actually still fine-tuning the script, regardless, and if I can't find the means to produce it, I'll see if I can sell it; it's a pretty catchy idea, and it's got everything that a good horror film should have. Onward...

I recently interviewed Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad regarding his upcoming film Jinn for Fangoria. I'm pretty excited about that as well as another article I'm doing for Fango (mums the word at the moment). My work on Horror Works has slowed a bit, which is a great relief. Boy does that site take a lot out of me. It's fun, I'll admit, but it requires mucho worko. I posted a review there last week for a really great show that I saw called The Mystery Plays at The Lex Theater in Los Angeles. Powerful good stuff!

Apart from some more music I'm working on and started recording for a possible short experimental film (feature or no feature, I just can't stop the flow of creative juices), I guess that's about it for now. Y'all take care, and have yourselves some happy holidays!

If I were a Monday and you were a Lady...

Burning the midnight oil, again. That being the case, my mind not might be functioning fully, but I figured I had enough of a good news update that I'd put it out there before I crash and bury myself in other stuff upon waking tomorrow. So here it is: I've finished my new feature screenplay.

It's not perfect, but, after brainstorming it and starting and stopping working on it for the last couple of months, I finished the first draft a few days ago; then I went right back and wrote a second draft, which I just finished this evening. One of the things I've had on my to-do list for the last few weeks has been to create a calendar of goals for the foreseeable future, and I managed to scribble one out in between my various gigs last week. I'm already behind schedule with the script, but I'm pretty much ready to declare that I will be beginning pre-production on the new film project within the next week with a goal of shooting in January or February. That means that things are going to start getting crazy busy for me again in the very near future.

I haven't not been busy all of this month, but all of the stuff I've been doing has been at a much more laid back pace since the madness of October (what with all of the Horror Works events I attended and wrote about). In fact, I've got another one of those tomorrow night; I'll be attending a play at the Geffen Playhouse, in Westwood, called "Play Dead". It's written by Todd Robbins and Teller (of Penn and Teller), and both friends and the media have been saying that it is a really great show. Fairly recently, I attended another play on behalf of Horror Works, which was not a "proper" horror show, but I still posted my review at Horror Works, here.

Beyond that, I've been doing my best to keep up with a fairly large backlog of content for Horror Works, which includes reviewing books and starting to profile LA horror artists; however, I have to confess, there aren't enough hours in the day. For many of the events that I cover, I take so many photos that they won't all fit with the articles that I lay out on the "official" site, so I create photo albums on the Horror Works Facebook page. And sometimes I cover events (like art shows) that I don't write articles for -- I just take photos of the artists and works of art and create albums to showcase and promote the events and artists. Within those photo albums, I try to tag as many of the people as I can, but, again, too few hours sometimes results in incomplete research and incomplete tagging. Anyway, here's a link to some of those photo albums.

All right, my brain is starting to mushify, so I'm gonna sign off now. Until we meet again, I bid you peace and good will!

It's about that time on a Wednesday...

Wow, now that's what I call an October! For Horror Works, I was basically double and triple stacking my weekend days with various events (mostly haunted houses). Then, during the week, I would hustle to catch up on writing my coverage and, usually, post additional photos from each event in respective photo albums on the Horror Works Facebook page.

In the course of my adventures, I have been meeting some really talented and cool people -- some of whom I may be collaborating with in the not-so-distant future. In any event, now that I've gotten past Halloween, my event coverage will be significantly lessened; this means that I'll have more time to dedicate to other projects. Mind, I'll still be updating the Horror Works calendar of horror-related events for LA horror fans and keeping tabs on the horror community -- as well as finally getting the Reviews section of the site going and doing a few profiles on various horror artists in the Los Angeles area; however, it's about time I got back to some of that good old film work, especially since I've had a new feature screenplay in the almost completed stage since September. Additionally, I've got another story that's been pouring out of my mind in the form of images and themes, and it's calling for my attention to give it a solid form.

For my final announcements, I've gotten a couple more horror magazine writing assignments, and, just because I'm a swell guy, I also wrote a short piece on Hammer horror films for Zombie Hamster (the website of my buddy and fellow horror scholar Colin McCracken). Oh yeah, I believe Fangoria issue #328 just came out. In it, I interview comic archivist and publisher Russ Cochran regarding the historic and artistic importance of the classic EC horror comics (Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear) which are just now continuing publication in the beautiful Archive volumes, courtesy of Dark Horse.

All right, I think that's all I've got for you right now. Peace be with y'all!

Things have gone crazy...and it's Saturday

It's hard to believe that it's already October 12! I've been busy like I haven't been in a long time; I've been averaging 5 hours of sleep a night, juggling various day jobs, pitching more articles to Fangoria and Rue Morgue, working on my new screenplay and tending to the many demands of my mistress, Horror Works -- and I'm loving it!

For each event I cover for the Dervish Pictures subsidiary site of Horror Works, I Photoshop event photos, research and write coverage, layout the page, create a photo album of additional images from the event (in most cases) for our Facebook extension, write clever descriptions for the images and tag relevant people, then promote the heck out of the page via Twitter and by sending e-mails and Facebook messages to strategic folks. In this way, each article reaches / expands the Horror Works audience, and most everybody whom I've hipped to the site has loved it and shared it with their own friends. Thus, the target Horror Works audience is growing on a consistent basis (knock wood).

Some of my recent articles have included coverage of H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon, Queen Mary's Dark Harbor, The Hive Art Gallery's Tribute to Ray Harryhausen and the Cambria Scarecrow Festival.

It is only because I had a few spare hours this evening, that I'm taking a brief break from my Horror Works responsibilities to take care of a few of my recently neglected tasks, like: updating this blog, taking a walk and doing the dishes. With that said, I should be getting back to it. Tonight's objective: process the photos from Los Angeles Haunted Hayride and finish writing the article on it. I attended the hayride on Thursday; last night I attended Rob Zombie's Great American Nightmare, and tomorrow I'm attending Son of Monsterpalooza.

All right, then. Enough of this break; it's back to work I go!

Thursday, the coffee tastes good.

Hey there, kiddies!

I'm pleased to announce that there's lots going on in Dervish Land on this fine August morning. Let's start with Outtake Reel, shall we?

Not only is today the birth date of Ava Santana, star of Outtake Reel, but it is the day that The Horror Show TV announced that it has picked up the film for VOD distribution throughout the UK.

Pre-production on the musical film project The Orange Man: Adrift has been fairly intense. Regrettably, much of the content of that project is incredibly depressing material, and after having buried myself in it for several weeks, I am slowing down for the purpose of maintaining my sanity. But it's good stuff, folks!

The residual energy that I've had to dedicate to all things productive and horror has been re-routed to a couple of other things. I will be writing my second article for Fangoria on the legacy of EC Horror Comics. Russ Cochran had been working with Gemstone Publishing to re-print them in beautiful archive books, but stopped right after horror and comic book fans were sufficiently hooked. Now, Dark Horse is picking up where he left off, and I'm on the case!

The final exciting news bulletin is that after attending Scare LA, the first Halloween Convention in Los Angeles, I wrote an article and posted it on my new site, Horror Works. The site is intended to inform horror fans about the various goings-on in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Being as though there is a generous-size horror community here, I thought it was odd that there wasn't a centralized hub; so, I hastily decided that I should start one. Also, I love attending various horror events and writing about them, but sometimes the various horror magazines for which I write pass on my coverage of said events. So, through this new site, "I give them to you, the people" [spoken in a Henry Kissinger / Bane voice].

The site features a News page, with listings of various LA area activities for horror fans; an Articles page, which features -- you guessed it -- my writings about local horror events; and a Reviews page, which is currently the home of a doozer and an "under construction" sign.

Whelp, that should catch you up for now. Fare thee well, and don't forget to have a great day!

Wednesday at the end of July

And with the re-creation of the official Dervish Pictures website, I get to cross another thing off of the old "to do" list. It's not fine-tuned yet, and in fact there are some pages which I haven't tackled yet; however, it's a start!

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on new original music for my musical film project. Things are coming along very well with that. There have been some frustrations, much trial and error, and, ultimately, some significant steps forward in the project's development. The project, incidentally, will be a short, live action / animated film called The Orange Man: Adrift.

Apart from that, I will be attending and reporting on the first ScareLA convention on August 10 and 11th. The event will feature Halloween-themed artists, filmmakers, designers, panels, exhibitors, etc. And, unless one of the many horror magazines to which I am currently contributing is interested in my coverage, it will be among the exclusive articles that will grace the pages of the Dervish Pictures website for the purposes of informing and celebrating the Horror Community, of which I am a proud member.

I guess that's about it for now, so, until next time, y'all be good now, y'hear?

Wednesday...some time in the United States

Aloha dear reader!

Yes, it's been a while [standard pre-amble for many a blog-post]. I must confess, I've been spending a lot of time with my other blog, but that's no reason for this blog to be jealous. It should be happy for me; I've been extending my creative energy into the world in the most productive way I can conceive [Freudian readers, please enjoy this sentence], and that has been my principle way of dealing with the various little (as well as overwhelming) life issues which have swarmed upon me and infiltrated my soul as of late.

However, since this is not an appropriate venue for expressing my issues -- even though it would really be a bargain for both of us -- I'll just stick to business here, and if you're really interested in experiencing the creative impulses of a suffering soldier who is fighting to get a grip on this thing called life, I urge you to follow my other blog. I promise, this one won't be jealous. As far as providing details of my personal struggles, that's off of the table at the moment, suffice it to say they deal with relationships and good old fashioned money.

Now for the sauce! In addition to my article which will be in an upcoming issue of Fangoria magazine, I've contributed an article and some ditties to Rue Morgue magazine. I'll keep you posted on street dates / issue numbers. As for TITO, I heard back from the Fantasia Film Festival...and they thought the acting sucked, but at least it wasn't a formal rejection. [Note to self: stop acting in your films]. But there's still hope for the project; two rejection notices are pending! In any event, that's certainly enough negative reinforcement to make working on The Making of TITO into an uninspiring chore. Still, I've got some decent material to cobble together for it, so it's still a possibility...

Currently, I've been pouring a lot of energy into yet another high-concept project [Note to self: perhaps if you created fewer "high-concept" projects and more "paint-by-the-numbers" ones, you might see an increased critical response and a modicum of money]. Anyway, this one is a sort of musical film project. I've written a series of songs which tell a metaphoric story. So far, I've workshopped and recorded several versions of the first two songs, and I'm pretty enthusiastic about continuing to develop the songs and then eventually produce a live-action / animated film to show the story.

Whelp, I guess that's about it for the news. There are other things in the planning, but since there always are, I'll just share what I've done and what I'm currently doing.

Thursday...far out, man!

Hey there, gangland, it's been a whirligig month or so... The first order of business is that I'm officially stepping down from my position as Editor-in-Chief of Diabolique magazine. My decision is essentially due to financial necessities; although time was a big factor, too.

In any event, it was both an honor and an educational experience working for Diabolique, and I want to thank Publisher / Layout Designer Dima Ballin for the opportunity of being the steward of his enterprise for five beautiful issues.

About a week ago, Screem magazine issue #26 came out. It is the first of several other horror magazines that I will now be writing for. For the Screem issue, I interviewed Stuart Gordon (director of Re-Animator, From Beyond, and many other films...), and we spoke mostly about H.P. Lovecraft. If you're a horror fan, you should check it out; it's a pretty good interview!

Also, I've pretty much got all of my old programs re-installed on my computer (after the crash), and since I'll now have a bit more time on my hands, I can proceed with the documentary for TITO. It's just a little making-of featurette that I'm going to include on the Tuning In, Tuning Out DVD that I'm giving to all of my investors, cast and crew members -- who have been most patient!

In the Harley news, after being told at the Illinois Secretary of State office that I could ride the 2004 Road King, that I'd basically inherited from my dad, from Chicago to Los Angeles and register it here, I called the California Department of Motor Vehicles. On the phone, I was told that I needed my mom to sign the bike over to me since she was the official custodian of all my dad's possessions. So, I mailed her the form, she filled it out, and I went to the DMV office only to be told that both the Illinois SOS office and the DMV phone representative had misinformed me. So, I mailed the title back to Illinois. Next, my mom went back to the SOS office, submitted the paperwork to have the bike put into her name, and next I will be able to return to the DMV office to finally register the bike. Unfortunately, I have to wait about three weeks until the SOS office completes the title transfer process.

All right, that basically catches you up. Beyond that, of course, there are numerous little and big projects that I'm always chipping away at on any given day. Thanks for tuning in! I'm out.

You hit me on the head with a Thursday?!?!

Dear imaginary readers,

Just another day in la la land for your humble head of Dervish Pictures. I thought I'd dedicate this blog entry to the human side of an independent artist. Many of the students whom I work with are on Spring Break this week which means that I've had time to dedicate to catching up with projects.

Unfortunately, Life has its own agenda, and most of my time has been spent dealing with putting Humpty Dumpty back together again (aka trying to put my computer back to the way it was before I suffered my first hard drive crash a couple weeks back), having my car fixed, and finding ways to compensate for my lack of decent, steady income...

When my computer crashed, all of the contents of my hard drive were salvageable, but I still have yet to re-install all of my programs. And since there are a couple of film festivals into which I wanted to enter TITO, I needed to be able to open my editing / DVD (and Blu-ray) authoring programs in order to burn discs to submit. Unfortunately, this proved VERY difficult... Alas, yesterday I had a limited success and was able to burn one copy. One more to go, and I will be sending TITO to both Fantasia and Atlanta Underground for consideration; both require being post-marked by today.

While driving back from L.A. last weekend, my temperature gauge went to the red and a little light went on. I pulled off of the Freeway in some unknown and eerily uninhabited area of the city, let my car cool down, added more coolant, and drove back to Orange County while blasting my heater to help keep the engine a little cooler. Next step was to get the car to my mechanic. Since my mechanic is about eight and a half miles away, I usually throw my bicycle into the back seat (removing the front tire, of course), drive there and pedal back (then pick the car up by reversing the last step). Unfortunately, while riding my bike last week, I had a couple of rough moments of riding which yielded a slightly warped tire and a deflated tube. So, to remedy the situation, I rode the Harley (usually reserved for serious road trips and pleasant day trips [for sanctity and because I don't like riding on CA's freeways]) to the bicycle shop for a new tube, did my best to re-align the tire on the bicycle's frame, and threw it in the car.

Yesterday morning I rode to my trusty mechanic's place, dropped the car, rode back, and later received the call; broken water pump and thermostat (~$460). Car is slowly shutting down, last month there was some other stuff wrong with it that cost me just as much... Oh well, that's what credit cards are for. I'll be riding my bicycle to pick up the car in about four hours.

Despite these problems, I have still managed to catch up on most of last month's e-mails from Diabolique, have been corresponding with writers for the current issue, and have been working on my own articles. Work on the Tito documentary has been paused due to the computer setback. And I guess that's about it. Y'all have a great day, y'hear?

One, two, three...Wednesday.

All right, it's been about four months, so it's time for another blog post. Who says I'm not regular?

Let's see here, at the top of the heap, there's Tuning In, Tuning Out, my short film, which I FINALLY put the finishing touches on about a month or so ago so that I could submit it to more film festivals; the cut that I screened at the premiere party in November had a couple of glitches (the frame rate was off in one scene and the sound was slightly out of sync and poorly mixed in another) and things that I wanted to change (specifically the length of one or two shots and at least one sound effect).

Now I've only yet to finish my work on " The Making of Tuning In, Tuning Out" documentary, so I can package these babies up and send them out to all of my incredibly patient investors, actors, and crew members...and then I can begin work on my next film project, whatever that may be. Oh, and speaking of documentaries, the doc I made about the cross-country Harley trip that I took is now in consideration at several documentary film festivals. The trip was taken on the 2005 Road King that I inherited from my dad, and the documentary was kind of a "trial run" for a more expansive documentary road trip film project which will also be a tribute to him.

In the literary world, editing Diabolique magazine has given me some very interesting opportunities. The theme for the current issue, which I brainstormed with Brandon Kosters, is Rock and Horror. After coming up with this theme, we pushed around some ideas; I wrote a bunch of outlines and assigned them to a pretty awesome stable of writers, and ended up with nothing short of a brilliant edition. For this issue I reviewed Dan O'Bannon's book on screenwriting (which was very entertaining and inspiring), and I interviewed Kevin "Ogre" Ogilvie from Skinny Puppy. If you've never had the opportunity to speak with someone whose work you loved (or of whom you used to have a poster when you were a teenager), I highly recommend it. Anyway, Ogre's projects have always been fascinating to me from thematic and production-based perspectives, and I'd never really read anything about band members Ogre or cEvin Key that answered all of the questions that I had about the methodology of their work. Ogre was very candid and spoke to me at length about his inspirations, his stage shows, and his work in film. He also supplied me with a bunch of really cool images that I ran in the mag. I am told that this issue should be in stores in a week or so, so make sure you get a copy before they're all snatched up!

About time, it's Saturday

Yes, comes a time, sluggish goes the way of postings... But here we are.

Yesterday my waiting finally ended - received a batch of the latest "master" of the Outtake Reel DVD from Jeffry, and I immediately mailed off 4 packages to various horror and cult reviewers. There are three more on deck, that I just need to package up, and they'll be good to go. Then one more to Lloyd Kaufman, for his Tromadance Film Festival (the only festival that I know of that doesn't charge an admission fee).

I also polished the latest draft of my newest script. I think it's a doosy! Thriller / horror is the genre, again. This is the one I wanted to be producing...well, heck, at this very moment, but other things delayed that. Still, I maintain enthusiasm that I will be able to produce it as my final attempt to make a zero budget horror film on the Left Coast.